Discussion

This piece is amazing as your other works.
I thinks that the question you brought up with this is really necessary.
To the industry (AAA) pixel art is pretty much gone, because there is this mindset in the game community of achiving a time of realism equals to really, a true simulation of the world, so the more realist/figurative/3d it gets the better.
Ressurect by fans, i think pixel art (pixel artists often) trys to finds it's place as still worth as a media. And as such i think that works like this one pushes the limit of pixel art being JUST a nostalgia factor, a videogame-like illustration, a mimesis, to be a viable for-all type of ideas.

Awesome. Thanks Cure: "I don't claim to be an innovator, but I do have the political capital to push this approach through to the gallery. I don't expect it to become a legal precedent for what is considered kosher, but I hope it can encourage more inclusive attitudes toward styles that exist where "oekaki" and "pixel art" overlap, or at least get the conversation going on "how loose is Toulouse?" and how we measure control/intent when it comes to pixel placement."

Yes, exactly. I have done this too, esp in commercial work. Using stuff like the smear mode in promotion to loosen areas up and then refining afterwards can work nicely. And if something ends up where you think it is cool while using "dirty" tools, that's fine. Just because pixelart let's us be incredibly anal does not mean we have to be all the time.

Also agree about the red, in that it is fine. The burn is very slight and it creates a nice colour dynamic imo.

While I certainly do appreiate something fresh I am not too keen on the dark saturated reds next to the dark desaturated blues. Blue should be more towards green or the red more towards brown to fit in the overall colorscheme and to get rid of the eyeburn in the dark areas, aside from that it's super nice.

The main issue is that "pixelart" is a relatively new term. When I had my Amiga back between 92-95 and did doodles and animataion in DPaint the term was not a thing. It was just drawing on a computer and it had some restrictions.

These restrictions are now completely gone with modern stuff like Photoshop (really they have been for a while), so I guess that is where that kinda purism comes from. People trying to codify the term "pixelart".

When I started doing pixelart in 2003 there was very much this feeling of this is good practise etc, and I think that there are things that are good practise, but it depends on what you want to do. Rules can be bent, rules can be broken, esp in "art"; Let's not try and make formulas for something that does not benefit from it, let alone need it.

I personally really like restrictions, because they are like a puzzle to me. But even on a system that is heavily restricted, like the C64, you can do something where someone on here would say: "But that is not pixelart."

The question about where to draw the line is a very valid one. When does a piece cease to be pixel art?
What if cure actually took very exacting care to where every pixel goes, which pixels he deletes, how he draws the squiggles?

If he did that would it be more pixelart than if he just noodled around half the time and then cleaned up only places he felt really needed it and left others in their originally doodle state.

Another good example is Helm's Death Walks. He has a link to the original Pixelation thread with progress snapshots. The final piece retains quite a few things from the first reduced step, apart from colour changes. Pixel placement stays, size reduction and aa decisions Helm did not make himself, but he approved them.

Or look at cure's liondog. Is that pixelart? IMO it is. There is intent, and cure chose to do it at low resolution with few (relatively speaking) colours. Intent is what matters, not what other people think should matter.

I am all for learning art fundamentals, it will benefit most people. But if we try and regiment pixelart too much and box it into some artificial shape we risk it becoming stale.

Experiments like this (which again, are nothing new really), are what keeps our perception of the medium fresh and help us grow. I for one would rather see way more stuff than this than having to look at a copy of a Secret of Mana tree ever again.

I think this is really cool and the rendering is refreshing. It's still hand placed pixel work and serves the piece. I think people get their marbles rumbled because it looks different and therefore it must be something "shady" going on.

People like rutine, I guess. As soon as anyone goes outside of that, some will feel awkward about it.

All that rambling out of the way; I think this is a very strong piece. The grit really works with the mood and the posture of the character really sells the setting.

The donkey looks a little bit goofy, though. Maybe it's because donkeys are generally depicted as silly and dumb? And having it look evil and stuff kinda makes it even more goofy.

I hope you continue to explore this. I feel it has some kind of van gogh touch to it, stary night to name an example. I think the grit can be pushed in that sort of flow, leading the eye, to create an even stronger composition.

Keep up the great work, and again - I appreciate you pushing the boundries.

I like this a lot. Pushing the envelope to allow for more pixels of this nature is a good use of your political capital indeed.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the figure below the sun in the upper right is too large, which slightly disrupts the sense of distance conveyed by the atmospheric perspective. But it's a minor point, and it's not like accurate proportionality is even necessarily beneficial in an Impressionist-style piece.

Friend: That's the idea. I don't claim to be an innovator, but I do have the political capital to push this approach through to the gallery. I don't expect it to become a legal precedent for what is considered kosher, but I hope it can encourage more inclusive attitudes toward styles that exist where "oekaki" and "pixel art" overlap, or at least get the conversation going on "how loose is Toulouse?" and how we measure control/intent when it comes to pixel placement.

it is a beautiful piece, but I feel less controlled pixels have been rejected many times over for that very reason. I like breaking the mold as much as the next guy, but where others have been declined, you seem to get a free pass to do so

ptoing: Destroy all clusters. WIP steps here. As you can see I originally wanted Death riding a potato-rabbit but later decided on a donkey.

PBDC: I think so too, updated.

et al: This experiment is definitely inspired by impressionist, post-impressionist (van Gogh), and neo-impressionist (pointillism) techniques, as well as looser aproaches I've seen at PJ over the years. Thanks for the feedback.

Clu-what-ers? Looks pretty cool, and I would love to see a progress video of this, but I reckon that does not exist. Steps at least?

Another thing I have to think about, is the old discussion of pure pixelart and the like, and whether something like this would have been accepted if it was not done by someone well known like you.

Still great. Breaking the mold is good.

Edit: There have been other people who have done stuff similar to this in the demoscene, esp on Amiga, Mermaid for example. But never have I seen an attempt where the chaos was as controlled and effective looking as here.

Oh, damn! I totally forgot about pointilism! Can't believe I was once taught that this art form existed and then subsequently failed to remember when I saw it here. I never was good with history anyway

For some reason, I can't help but feel that it looks a tad bit too noisy for my tastes

I mean I really like the skeleton and the donkey and the composition is marvelous, but the scenery itself (the sky and the sand dunes(?)) just feels very distorted and baffles me a little lol Was this an intended effect or...?

Nice work TomiCure! Amongst other things, I like the part where we have to guess if every pixel was placed intentionally. If this was made by anyone else I might have forwarded them to The Pixel Art Tutorial... Duchampian protest?